Thursday, 31 October 2013

Day 7 Paris, FR to Reims, FR

No need for an alarm clock this morning… Oh no, no, no! Being licked in the face by a dog will surely do the trick. Wiping the slobber off the face, we got up and headed to the Cardis. Now… if we had thought about the logistics of how our cars were parked the night before, then we wouldn't have had to wait an hour to get the Cardis out and hit the road to Reims - mistake noted. While we waited we had the pleasure of watching 3 friendly dogs having fun. Too much fun perhaps as one decided to urinate on the French bands guitar head. Not cool. We said our goodbyes to the other bands and away we went.

We're getting really good at making sandwiches in the car. Like really good.

Music shop

We intentionally arrived in Reims about two hours early before we were due to be at the venue to see some of the sites, seeing as this is our 4th time in here and we haven't seen any of it! Reims has a pretty big Cathedral named Notre-Dame de Reims and is where the Kings are/were crowned. It's very nice. Reims also has the only place we've seen to have a security guard to monitor the use of the toilets at McDonalds. We didn't see the inside of their toilets but we did make use of their wifi from outside. Continuing our wander round the city we hunted for some food & we found a place that did a very nice chicken sandwich (the guy who served us was a French version of Colin Farrell). Sam had been looking for a place to buy a new bass drum skin so finding a music shop was very handy. The guy gave Sam a massive discount (probably because we are complete lads).

We made our way back to the car and drove round to the venue, we had arrived bang on time (5pm) but were told to come back at 6 when the venue was open. Sam stayed at the car to put his new skin on while I went for a walk. I sat on a bench and had a conversation in French with a man, who proceeded to ask me for money after we finished talking… he left empty handed.

I arrived at the venue at six and Sam had already started to load the gear in. The place we were playing was called L'apparat Cafe and was organised by a really cool guy called Francesco (possibly the coolest guy in France). Francesco had arranged for us to eat at a place a couple of doors down, the two burgers and chips we had went down very well The other two bands playing that night were Chaos E.T Sexual from Paris and Caustic Lips from Reims. Reims is the place we have played most in France so it was nice to see people who have been at previous shows coming to see us play again. Both of the other bands played and were good, by the time the second band finished the place was really busy. We set up and played and it was pretty good, not the best we have played this tour but people were really, really into it which was great.

After the show we packed up and went back to Francesco's flat, he had a secure underground parking garage which meant that we didn't have to unload the gear… cashback! Francesco and his girlfriend (Ségolihe) bought out loads of alcohol that Ségolihe's blind grandfather had made, it was surprisingly nice. Being that we were in the Champagne district and Francesco being a true player, he cracked out a bottle of Champagne to celebrate a successful gig. We sat around listening to records and chatting until about three and then went to bed. The guys from Chaos E.T Sexual had to get up at 5.30 to do a ten hour drive to play their next show in Czech Republic, nutters!